the cooking pot

so, when we ‘own’ a room, we would want to make it convenient for us. that’s why we have to have some must-haves in the kitchen, I mean tools and utensils. they are needed to make our toils in the kitchen a lot easier.
my cooking session would start pretty well with a good knife. nowadays, i prefer the bigger, sharper blades than the smaller ones. i can just smash garlic for instant peel and chop chicken parts off without too much hassle.
then my a good chopping board would make cutting smoother. i like my mom’s plastic chopping board. we’ve used that for 10 years or so. may be i take it with me to my own home and buy my mom a new one ^_^
i can’t eat coarse garlic and ginger, so my next favourite utensil is mortar and pestle. i pound everything that i need to  grind with them. in fact, most of my cooking with ground ingredients taste better.
of course, when it comes to cooking itself, we would want good pots and pans. wok is not bad either. my mom has one good wok- light and non-sticking. that has been used for many GREAT years as well. for cooking soups, i suggest a good clay pot. good- meaning it is easy to handle. oh, soups taste so much better cooked in one of those.
hope this helps.

so, how do you intend to cook? by the book or just throw anything into your pot?
if you have been watching some cookery shows on tv, you will certainly notice that in the ‘old’ days, cooks will arrange their ingredients on the cooking table and guide you by putting every single ingredient one by one into the pot. that may be the reason why we think cooking is so tedious. the fact is we don’t have time to arrange them and then start cooking, and when everything’s done, we actually have to wash all the temporary containers.
then cooks like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson come around, showing us how easy cooking is by just grabbing the stuff needed from anywhere in the kitchen, treat them accordingly and put them staraight into the pot. I have been inspired a lot by these two persons in the way of going around the kitchen.
freestyle of cooking, to me, is to know the basic ingredients but giving the rescipes some twists of taste. let’s say we want to cook soup for example. some cinnamon, star anise, garlic, white pepper, cardamon seeds, clover, ginger and some chicken are needed for a basic soup. if we like the taste of some herbs, we know which one to put more, for example an additional petals of star anise or cardamon seeds, will add some sweet taste to the broth, or a few more slices of ginger will increse spiciness. you have your own distinct taste in your cooking. you won’t be stcking to the old ways of preparing the food because you are already enjoying your own taste.
but freestyle cooking may not come instantly. you may have to check and test the original rescipes first hand before you can modify them to your own.

think we’re going to just begin it all!
before we even start thinking of cooking, get to know your kitchen and the cooking pots, for real. this will save you alot of time, thus putting the myth ‘cooking is too time consuming’ aside. or, in case if you need to grab something unexpectedly, you’ll know where to pull it from, and not having to still look for them and makes things worse. get to know what type of food suits the pots and the utensils needed. then do a liitle bit thinking of how are you going to manage the cooked food. I mean, does it need to get off the stove quickly, or does it need to sit there for a few more minutes, etc.
what, think of all that? cooking is hard then, but you don’t have to think of it like you’re going to buy a house or a car. just go to the kitchen whenever your mom is cooking, or just watch Jamie Oliver on Travel and Adventure channel. see how they move, see how they grab things, see how they treat their cooking pots, and all. it’s not too hard when Jamie Oliver can cook, you guys.
and when everything’s done, please clean up. don’t expect others to do it for you. that makes your dishes more delicious.

hm, hello
I have already blogged outside friendster. think I kinda have some more spare time to create another blog here then. well, it’s inspirational!

you know nowadays we have problems hanging around the kitchen, especially to cook something decent enough for somebody else, or ourselves, to eat? some of us do. we don’t like heat, we’re afraid of hot oil, we don’t know how to cut the chicken into smaller pieces, we don’t like the smell of some uncooked food, cooking is too time consuming, bla bla bla. guys, we can find so many, many reasons not to do something, how about finding at least a reason to do it, to cook. let’s say we want to prepare a good meal for our mom every night, for instance. so, what I’m going to do here is share my experience in the kitchen with some interested domestic-helpers wannabes- erh, so to speak!
not going to start anything today, just looking around.